Denis Glover: Selected Poems

by Denis Glover, Bill Manhire (Editor)

Overview

Denis Glover wrote New Zealand's most famous poem, yet his work has been out of print for many years. This fresh selection from his verse includes 'The Magpies' along with a wide variety of other poems, lyrical and satirical. Bill Manhire's selection is based on Glover's own 1981 Selected Poems, and it reveals a richer and far more lively writer than the one usually found in anthologies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780864737199
Publisher:	Victoria University Press
Publication date:	04/01/2014
Sold by:	INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	581 KB

About the Author

Printer, typographer, publisher, boxer, sailor, scholar, satirist, wit and poet, Denis Glover was born in Dunedin in 1912 and died in Wellington in 1980. He founded the Caxton Press in 1936 and published much important New Zealand writing. He wrote New Zealand's most famous poem, yet his work has been out of print for many years. Bill Manhire was born in Invercargill in 1946 and educated at the Universities of Otago and London. He now heads the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington and is director of their prestigious creative writing programme.He is due to retire in February 2013. Graduates of the course include many of New Zealand's most accomplished contemporary writers. His most recent books are his Selected Poems, and These Rough Notes published in 2012. The Victims of Lightning was published in 2010 and shows him at the height of his powers. He has also recently co-edited the anthologies The Best of Best New Zealand Poems and The Exercise Book. In 1997 he was made New Zealand's inaugural Poet Laureate, in a scheme sponsored by Te Mata Estate, and the collection of poetry What To Call Your Child was published to celebrate his term as Poet Laureate. At the heart of the book is a sequence of poems which arose from a visit to Antarctica in 1998. He spent two weeks on the ice, and was briefly at the South Pole. Bill's fascination with Antarctica has resulted in The Wide White Page: Writers Imagine Antarctica, an anthology of writing about Antarctica published by VUP in 2004. It was shortlisted for the 2005 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Bill has published many books of poetry (four times winning the New Zealand Book Award and the Poetry category in the 2006 Montana New Zealand Book Awards) and also a number of volumes of fiction. As an editor, he is responsible for a number of best-selling anthologies of New Zealand poetry and short stories, while a collection of his essays and interviews, Doubtful Sounds, was published by VUP in 2000. His regular conversations with Kim Hill on National Radio had a wide following and did much to raise interest in poetry throughout the country. His Collected Poems 1967-1999 was published by Victoria University Press in New Zealand in July 2001 and by Carcanet in the UK. He has also published a memoir in the Montana Estate Essay series called Under the Influence about growing up in the Otago and Southland pubs run by his family. In 2004 Bill was awarded the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, NZ's most prestigious literary fellowship and he spent six months working at the Villa Isola Bella, Menton, in the south of France. In June 2005 Bill Manhire was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit and in November he was named as one of the five Arts Foundation of New Zealand 2005 Laureates. In December that year he received an honorary Doctorate of Literature from the University of Otago. Published in July 2005, his collection of poetry Lifted was universally acclaimed and it won the Poetry category in the 2006 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. It was published in the UK by Carcanet in January 2007. Most recently Bill has been involved with the editing and publication of Janet Frame's posthumous collection of poems, The Goose Bath, winner of the Poetry Prize in the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. He was also joint project leader of Are Angels OK?, a sci-art collaboration between leading New Zealand writers and physicists. In August 2007 Bill was named as the winner of the 2007 Prime Minister's Award for Poetry.

Read an Excerpt

Denis Glover Selected Poems

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By Denis Glover, Bill Manhire

Victoria University Press

Copyright © 1995 The estate of Denis Glover
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-86473-719-9

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CHAPTER 1

    EXPLANATORY

    Our reedy fens and hollow logs,
    our model pens where wallow hogs,
    our very noble native trees,
    let others hymn as they may please;

    our native birds that lushly sing
    pip-toot pip-toot God save the King,
    our vines that so obligingly
    go crawling up the nearest tree,
    are sung by them but not by me;

    – or try the guide books. (Goodness knows
    our scenery's better than our prose.)

    For though the farmer sweats away
    to harvest home sweet summer hay
    the most of us will find no balm,
    no Paradise, no Sabine farm.


    HOME THOUGHTS

    I do not dream of Sussex downs
    or quaint old England's
    quaint old towns –
    I think of what may yet be seen
    in Johnsonville or Geraldine.


    SUNDAY MORNING

    On Sunday the air more naturally breathes,
    time stands a little still, and plants put forth
    luxurious green life, sweet sunlight weaves
    warm patterns on the wall facing the north.

    No urgent task, we set our hands upon
    hoe, spade or spanner; back-fence gossip tells
    epic of artichokes, career of cars; later on
    air falls under the heavy yoke of bells.


    EPITAPH

    Was born, is dead.
    Let this be said
    on stone over my head
    or graven on urn
    when it's my turn.

    Sub-edit the stories
    or tributes and glories,
    nor pausing to dab
    slow tear at my slab
    sacrifice any flowers
    to my leaden hours.

    Is anyone stirred
    by Whose death has occurred,
    or by text like the next?

    Let it simply be said
    Was born, is dead.


    ALL OF THESE

    Consider, praise, remember all of these –

    All, blueprint in hand, who slowly rivet
    the intricate structure, handle girders like feathers,
    take the inert and formless cement, give it
    meaning, rearing new walls against weather;

    these, guiding surely the sky-swung cargo bales
    yawing over black hold; against all gales
    they steady with merchandise the rolling mast,
    pack tightly the walls of a ship, storm-fast;

    these, building together the parts of an engine,
    till revolutions, sweetly tension-strung,
    instantly answer as control sends in
    message to metal, giving lovely tongue;

    these whose laboured cunning plough
    carves deeply the sweep of the hill's brow;
    now with horses clumsily swinging anew
    they've creamed over the black earth, arrow-true;

    hands, timber-tried, that round the vessel's bow
    to take the wave, know prematurely how
    the unsalted hull will lift to breaking seas –
    consider, praise, remember all of these.

    Their easy partnership of hand and eye
    divides them not; life they identify
    with effortless use of tools, lovely, articulate,
    striking clear purpose into the inanimate.


    THE ROAD BUILDERS

    Rolling along far roads on holiday wheels
    now wonder at their construction, the infinite skill
    that balanced the road to the gradient of the hill,
    the precision, the planning, the labour it all reveals.

    An unremembered legion of labourers did this,
    scarring the stubborn clay, fighting the tangled bush,
    blasting the adamant, stemming the unbridled rush
    of torrent in flood, bridging each dark abyss.

    Their tools were pitiful beside the obdurate strength of the land:
    crosswire of the theodolite, pick-point, curved shovel,
    small tremor of a touched-off charge; but above all
    the skill and strength, admirable in patience, of the hand.

    These men we should honour above the managers of banks.
    They pitted their flesh and their cunning against odds
    unimagined by those who turn wordily the first sods.
    And on the payroll their labour stands unadorned by thanks.

    Who they are, or where, we do not know. Anonymous they die
    or drift away; some start the job again; some in a country pub
    recount old epic deeds amid that unheeding hubbub,
    telling of pitiless hills, wet mountain roads where rusting barrows lie.


    HOLIDAY PIECE

    Now let my thoughts be like the Arrow, wherein was gold,
    and purposeful like the Kawarau, but not so cold.

    Let them sweep higher than the hawk ill-omened,
    higher than peaks perspective-piled beyond Ben Lomond;
    let them be like at evening an Otago sky
    where detonated clouds in calm confusion lie.

    Let them be smooth and sweet as all those morning lakes,
    yet active and leaping, like fish the fisherman takes;
    and strong as the dark deep-rooted hills, strong
    as twilight hours over Lake Wakatipu are long;

    and hardy, like the tenacious mountain tussock,
    and spacious, like the Mackenzie plain, not narrow;
    and numerous as tourists in Queenstown;
    and cheerfully busy, like the gleaning sparrow.

    Lastly, that snowfield, visible from Wanaka,
    compound their patience – suns only brighten,
    and no rains darken, a whiteness nothing could whiten.


    LETTER TO COUNTRY FRIENDS

    We in the city live as best we can,
    Fettered by fears of by-laws and police.
    Our short perspective magnifies alarms;
    We feel uneasy when the gas-man calls;
    And hopes decline, through tabulated years,
    To quarter-acre sections neatly fenced.

    Daily across the photographic page
    Waddle the imbecile guns; the stock exchange
    Is jumpy; over the rented house
    Falls the new shadow of a block of flats.

    Discarded nightly by a train, and by the gate
    Taking the paper from the garden path,
    We, in the angle of a clock's hands,
    Envy your country lives.

    Therefore, beyond the city, we are glad to find
    Your country, where the flat roads run
    Like helter-skelter hares across the land,
    With its frontier the capricious ford
    And your fields that lie towards one another,
    Mountains being near.

    Your ways are ordered, too – though not
    By the compelling hours, nor is your dawn
    Awakened by the milkman's changing gears.
    Your lives are more deliberate: you note
    Symptoms in sheep, and gauge the winter feed,
    Combat encroaching blight; and all the time
    You wage indifferent your war with weather.

    Fronting your formidable hills, hedges are toys
    And toy-like those scattered buildings;
    Nevertheless home to you,
    And your wide gates stand open.


    IN FASCIST COUNTRIES

    In fascist countries knaves now walk abroad
    Meeting with approbation, and the fools
    Like headlong rushing stars divert the night.
    A thousand prowlers hear the unspoken word
    And pry in others' pockets. Letters are opened,
    And the traitorous wind, whisking a secret off,
    Is ordered to be still. The gates clang to,
    And over the prisoner's head magistrates
    Serve up cold justice with flamboyant words.

    In words dated like medals the junta speaks
    Festooned with flowers, and the amplified air
    Trumpets each martial and auspicious hour.
    The leader-writers like a prodded fire
    Burst into flame: truth is a cast-off coat;
    And liberty, a cigarette flung down,
    Smoulders awhile, and then goes quietly out.

    Chart-gazing the astrologers now see
    Prodigious portents, and colliding suns
    Shatter prediction's glass. Where shall we turn?
    Here's a world hurt no herbalist can heal;
    And the improbable future what tea-cup will foretell?


    NOT ON RECORD

    Ancient and crazed, with eye a-glitter,
    The prospector crossed the laborious range
    Like a beetle, and was drowned in the bend
    Of a river that's not yet named:
    Not the gold, but the dream was his end.


    STAGE SETTING

    Up-thrust between shoulders of sea
    Is the narrow stage, submarine
    Outcrop, sea-troubled land-bubble
    Ocean top sprouting with green.

    This is the scene,
    And the curtain goes up
    On us all: the band
    Is played by the wind.

    The sun's the spotlight;
    When the play starts
    There's no prompter, and no pretence
    That the unrehearsed parts make sense.

    For audience?
    Motionless mountains in the gods
    Propping their lids,
    And in the side-stalls the sea
    Moving restlessly.

    And the plot, the plot?
    – How you and I
    Were unhutched and crawled
    And learned to be.

    Then what?
    – To grow old, and die.


    THE MAGPIES

    When Tom and Elizabeth took the farm
    The bracken made their bed,
    And Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
    The magpies said.

    Tom's hand was strong to the plough
    Elizabeth's lips were red,
    And Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
    The magpies said.

    Year in year out they worked
    While the pines grew overhead,
    And Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
    The magpies said.

    But all the beautiful crops soon went
    To the mortgage-man instead,
    And Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
    The magpies said.

    Elizabeth is dead now (it's years ago);
    Old Tom went light in the head;
    And Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
    The magpies said.

    The farm's still there. Mortgage corporations
    Couldn't give it away.
    And Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
    The magpies say.


    A WOMAN SHOPPING

    Beauty goes into the butcher's shop
    Where blood taints the air;
    The chopper comes down on the block
    And she pats her hair.

    Death's gallery hangs ready
    Naked of hair and hide,
    But she has clothes on her body
    And a heart inside.

    What's death to the lady, pray?
    Even shopping's a bore.
    – The carcases gently sway
    As she goes out the door.

    But death goes with her on the way:
    In her basket along the street
    Rolls heavily against her thigh
    The blood-red bud of the meat.


    THOUGHTS ON CREMATION

    I

    Not like a fallen feather
    Is he laid away under the high
    Rooflessness of sky
    Where the mourners gather
    Like leaves blown together:

    A room frames this grief;
    Falls on the charged air
    A loudspeaker's lipless prayer,
    And bare walls vouchsafe
    A harsher echo of death.

    II

    Where no sharp outlines print
    On tear-blurred eye
    Let the obscene lens wink:
    The camera cannot cry.

    III

    The borrowed ritual of the tomb
    Has no place in this whitened room:
    Though hearts are breaking
    Everyone should be smoking.

    IV

    Would he be done yet, Bill?
    Asked the assistant-stoker.
    – Better give him another minute or two:
    He was a big joker.

    V

    Please see that I'm cremated,
    The busy baker said,
    Please see that I'm cremated
    When I'm dead.

    And on a busy baking day
    The busy baker passed away.

    Let's put him in the oven,
    Was what they said,
    Let's make a baker's dozen
    With the baker dead.

    Although if similarly placed
    We might deplore unseemly haste,
    We can but praise the thrift that led
    To baking him beside the bread.

    VI

    That great antiquity, America, lay buried for a thousand years
    Sir Thomas Browne

    Consumed by every whimsy of the hour
    They've put up crematoria by the score.
    When the flower is dead, should we burn the flower?
    America, thou should'st be buried as before.

    VII

    Making their graves in the air,
    The Scythians swore by wind and the sword
    That the spirit would fly afar
    Like a riderless horse, like a bird.

    And black on the wave's last slope,
    In columned smoke from the cloud
    Hung the Viking's funeral ship
    Flame-rigged and weapon-proud.

    But we have been born of dead
    Lying quiet in their graveyard ranks;
    They saw it was good to be laid
    Under a cross and a word of thanks:

    The Christian knows that interment
    Is merely a first instalment,
    And they sleep well over whom roll
    The great cadences of Paul.

    VIII

    Have no misgiving
    The man to the mourner said;
    Let us look to the living,
    And earth will look to the dead.


    THRENODY

    In Plimmerton, in Plimmerton,
    The little penguins play,
    And one dead albatross was found
    At Karehana Bay.

    In Plimmerton, in Plimmerton,
    The seabirds haunt the cave,
    And often in the summertime
    The penguins ride the wave.

    In Plimmerton, in Plimmerton,
    The penguins live, they say,
    But one dead albatross they found
    At Karehana Bay.


    CENTENNIAL

    In the year of centennial splendours
    There were fireworks and decorated cars
    And pungas drooping from the verandas

    – But no one remembered our failures.

    The politicians like bubbles from a marsh
    Rose to the platform, hanging in every place
    Their comfortable platitudes like plush

    – Without one word of our failures.


    ARROWTOWN

    Gold in the hills, gold in the rocks,
    Gold in the river gravel,
    Gold as yellow as Chinamen
    In the bottom of the shovel.

    Gold built the bank its sham facade;
    Behind that studded door
    Gold dribbled over the counter
    Into the cracks of the floor.

    Gold pollinated the whole town;
    But the golden bees are gone –
    Now round a country butcher's shop
    The sullen blowflies drone,

    Now paved with common clay
    Are the roads of Arrowtown;
    And the silt of the river is grey
    In the golden sun.


    LEAVING FOR OVERSEAS

    They make an end at last, binding their friends
    With words awkward as names on trees.
    Water devours the land, the wave
    Mocking every mountain-top of home.

    A ship's wake heals slowly, like a wound.

    Daily they watch horizons saucer-rim
    Slide tilting, where the whale
    Takes his gigantic solitary bath. At night
    Before the stars' silver tremendous stare
    They button up a coat or turn to cards.

    Swung on the arc of war towards older islands
    Where the thin sun has less to squander
    They hold strange course – remembering
    And remembering where in the mind's map lie
    The road and the mountain,
    Islands of home
    Pointing a finger at the near north's heart.


    SAILOR'S LEAVE

    Oh make me a ballad
    About my red red lips
    As you cling to them, sailor boy,
    My waiting lips.

    – All the ballads, all the poems,
    Have been written, my dear.
    And how could I write any
    While you were near?

    Then make me a ballad
    As if I were not near,
    Oh make me a ballad
    While you stroke my hair.

    – I could make you a ballad
    About my drowned mates,
    About the clutch of the cold ocean
    And the hot deck plates.

    But you're on leave, sailor boy,
    And life begins again.
    – I still remember the tilting deck
    And the seas breaking in.

    My sweet, my head's on your shoulder,
    And your hours are few;
    The sea is always waiting
    And I've waited, too.

    – Then oh lass, my sweet lass,
    Pour me out your wine:
    The colder kiss of the ocean
    Is not yet mine.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Denis Glover Selected Poems by Denis Glover, Bill Manhire. Copyright © 1995 The estate of Denis Glover. Excerpted by permission of Victoria University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Title Page,
Introduction,
from SIX EASY WAYS 1936,
from THIRTEEN POEMS 1939,
from RECENT POEMS 1941,
from THE WIND AND THE SAND 1945,
from SINGS HARRY AND OTHER POEMS 1951,
ARAWATA BILL 1953,
from SINCE THEN 1957,
from POETRY HARBINGER 1958,
from 'LATER POEMS', ENTER WITHOUT KNOCKING 1964,
from SHARP EDGE UP 1968,
from 'EVEN LATER POEMS', ENTER WITHOUT KNOCKING 1971,
TO A PARTICULAR WOMAN 1970,
from DIARY TO A WOMAN 1971,
from WELLINGTON HARBOUR 1974,
from DANCING TO MY TUNE 1974,
from COME HIGH WATER 1977,
from OR HAWK OR BASILISK 1978,
from TOWARDS BANKS PENINSULA 1979,
UNCOLLECTED,
Pastoral from the Doric,
Notes,
Index of Titles and First Lines,
Copyright,